Anne Frank
With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the
fight for human dignity
Along with everything else she came to represent, Anne Frank symbolized the
power of a book. Because of the diary she kept between 1942 and 1944, in the secret
upstairs annex of an Amsterdam warehouse where she and her family hid until the Nazis
found them, she became the most memorable figure to emerge from World War II —
besides Hitler, of course, who also proclaimed his life and his beliefs in a book. In a way,
the Holocaust began with one book and ended with another. Yet it was Anne's that finally
prevailed — a beneficent and complicated work outlasting a simple and evil one — and
that secured to the world's embrace the second most
famous child in history.
So stirring has been the effect of the solemn-eyed,
cheerful, moody, funny, self-critical, other-critical
teenager on those who have read her story that it became a test of ethics to ask a
journalist, If you had proof the diary was a fraud, would you expose it? The point was
that there are some stories the world so needs to believe that it would be profane to
impair their influence. All the same, the Book of Anne has inspired a panoply of
responses — plays, movies, documentaries, biographies, a critical edition of the diary —
all in the service of understanding or imagining the girl or, in some cases, of putting her
down.
"Who Owns Anne Frank?" asked novelist Cynthia Ozick, in an article that holds up the
diary as a sacred text and condemns any tamperers. The passions the book ignites suggest
that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism,
girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world — the
moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live
and question and hope for the future of human beings. particular as was the Nazi method
of answering "the Jewish question," it also, if incidentally, presented a form of the
archetypal modern predicament. When the Nazis invaded Holland, the Frank family, like
all Jewish residents, became victims of a systematically constricting universe. First came
laws that forbade Jews to enter into business contracts. Then books by Jews were burned.
Then there were the so-called Aryan laws, affecting intermarriage. Then Jews were
barred from parks, beaches, movies, libraries. By 1942 they had to wear yellow stars
stitched to their outer garments. Then phone service was denied them, then bicycles.
Trapped at last in their homes, they were "disappeared."
At which point Otto and Edith Frank, their two daughters Margot and Anne and the Van
Pels family decided to disappear themselves, and for the two years until they were
betrayed, to lead a life reduced to hidden rooms. But Anne had an instrument of freedom
in an autograph book she had received for her 13th birthday. She wrote in an early entry,
"I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me." She had no idea how widely
that support and comfort would extend, though her awareness of the power in her hands
seemed to grow as time passed. One year before her death from typhus in the Bergen-
Belsen camp, she wrote, "I want to be useful or give pleasure to people around me who
yet don't really know me. I want to go on living even after my death!"
The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good
writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly
honest disposition. Millions were moved by the purified version of her diary originally
published by her father, but the recent critical, unexpurgated edition has moved millions
more by disanointing her solely as an emblem of innocence. Anne's deep effect on
readers comes from her being a normal, if gifted, teenager. She was curious about sex,
doubtful about religion, caustic about her parents, irritable especially to herself; she
believed she had been fitted with two contradictory souls.
Anne Frank's diary is the voice of the Holocaust-the voice that speaks for the millions
Hitler silenced. Anne went into hiding at the age of 13, a rambunctious and at times
difficult child. Her diary reveals her maturation into a gifted young writer, and when
discovered two years later, the precocious child had evolved into a young woman. Anne
was eventually transported to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, where she died of
typhus shortly before the Allies liberated the camp. Anne Frank's diary is the legacy of
young girl denied her adulthood by Hitler's killing machine, and stands for the many
women and men, young and old, whose lives Hitler's final solution snatched.
The story of her life is a tragedy, but the enduring message is one of hope and tolerance
that will never die. The new edition reveals a new depth to Anne's dreams, irritations,
hardship, and passions . . . There may be no better way to commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary of the end of World War II than to reread The Diary of a Young Girl, a
testament to an indestructivle nobility of spirit in the face of pure evil."
--Chicago Tribune
Excerpts:
Wednesday, April 5, 1944 :
I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in
life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know I can write...it remains to
be seen whether I really have talent...I need to have something besides a husband and
children to devote myself to!... I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even
those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so
grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to
express all that's inside me!
“When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!
But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever
become a journalist or a writer? "...if you're wondering if it's harder for the adults here
than for the children, the answer is no...Older people have an opinion about everything
and are sure of themselves and their actions. It's twice as hard for us young people to
hold on to our opinions at a time when ideals are being shattered..." (July 15, 1944.)
When was the last time as an adult that you experienced the "shattering" of an ideal? Is
the media a neutral force, or do you think it plays a role in supporting or destroying
idealism?
Anne Frank and her family were German refugees who resettled and tried to build their
lives in the Netherlands. Although the Franks were proud of their German heritage, their
feelings toward Germany became very complicated during the war. Anne wrote: "Fine
specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I'm actually one of them! No. that's
not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides, there are no greater
enemies on earth than the Germans and Jews." (October 9, 1942.)
"I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the
common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled
long ago!" (May 3, 1944.) How should accountability be assigned? So many say they
never understood what was happening. How likely could that have been?
On the
Deportations
"Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in
droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them
in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're
sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in
those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending
them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English
radio says they're being gassed." - October 9, 1942
Have you ever heard the term 'hostages'? That's the latest punishment for
saboteurs. It's the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens-innocent people--are taken prisoner to await their execution. If the
Gestapo can't find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line
them up against the wall. You read the announcements of their death in
the paper, where they're referred to as 'fatal accidents." - October 9, 1942
All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the
effect that they 'sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New
Order." Eighty percent have decided to obey the dictates of their
conscience, but the penalty will be severe. Any student refusing to sign
will be sent to a German labor camp." - May 18, 1943
Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said
that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war.
Of course, everyone pounced on my diary." - March 29, 1944
When I write, I can shake off all my cares." - April 5, 19
"
I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on
turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway. I'll just let matters
take their course and concentrate on studying and hope that everything will be all right in
the end." - February 3, 1944
"...but the minute I was alone I knew I was going to cry my eyes out. I slid to the floor in my
nightgown and began by saying my prayers, very fervently. Then I drew my knees to my
chest, lay my head on my arms and cried, all huddled up on the bare floor. A loud sob
brought me back down to earth..." - April 5, 1944
Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I'm actually one of them! No,
that's not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides, there are no greater
enemies on earth than the Germans and Jews." - October 9, 1942
It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I
cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at
heart.
It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and
death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching
thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I
look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this
cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more" - July 15, 1944
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